How Science and Art Came Together to Inspire a Photographer

If there's one thing I've learned from having dual career paths in science and the arts, it's that the ways of thinking are not all that unalike and that really, scientists and artists are often trying to understand the same thing from different perspectives: the meaning and importance of human existence. This great talk examines how one engineer and photographer combined the two to overcome his colorblindness and create his own perspective of the world.

In this talk at TEDx Penn, Johnathan Chen details how he has married a love of science with a keen artistic impulse through his photography and how the effort and difficulty of planning, shooting, and post-processing an image lend it a certain beauty and meaning. It's interesting to see how he takes a neat scientific phenomenon, Prince Rupert's Drop, and uses it both as inspiration and as a very literal foundation for an image, taking a still from high-speed footage and using it as a mask for an image of Earth disintegrating, representing his commitment to conservation and environmental responsibility. Chen sees the world through science and uses photography to create his own perspective, and the results are both unique and fascinating. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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9 Comments

With the exception of Carl Sagan, science-oriented individuals should probably only give talks to other science-oriented individuals. I struggled as far as the "disintegrating earth" image and finally gave up.

I’ll be sure to never give any speeches then. I’ll tell Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Kary Mullis, Lawrence Krauss, Evelyn Hu, Neil deGrasse Tyson, etc. the same.

Please do! The fact you mention them makes me wonder... You just picked the better known speakers or you actually find them interesting? ;-) Knowledgeable in their respective fields, aside from Bill who doesn't belong on your list, certainly. But interesting to the average person?

Yes, interesting to the average person. And I greatly fear a world in which the only people who listen to scientists are other scientists.

Carl Sagan was interesting. Richard Feynman...not so much. Again, that's not to say Carl was a great scientist or Richard not. I actually fear the world we're in, where people who listen to scientists don't understand what they're hearing or have access to all relevant data, resulting in accepting everything as truth or blindly accept their opinions on unrelated fields just because a scientist said it. For example, Richard Dawkins is obviously very knowledgeable when it comes to animal behavior and evolution but most people have only heard him debate his views regarding religion. Why does anyone care what he thinks about that? That's not to say he's necessarily wrong in his views but why should they be given special consideration due to his profession? In the same way, why would anyone care what his religious debate partners think about evolution? Bill Nye likes to talk about, well, everything but he cherry picks his facts and conflates opinion with fact. Of course he's not really a scientist. He's a "science guy", whatever that means.

Don't misunderstand. I have a lot of respect for real scientists and have listened to countless scientific lectures. Still...not always an interesting bunch for the layperson. Listening to a Physicist talk about string theory comes to mind. Zzzz ;-)

How could you not like string theory!? :P Have you heard Brian Greene or Michio Kaku talk about it yet?

I personally love Feynman. And yes, people should vet scientists like they vet anything else. If there's one thing I've learned from working in such a field, it's that there are bad scientists just like there are bad photographers, doctors, plumbers, chefs, etc. And as you say, people should listen to scientists when they talk about their expertise and take everything else with a grain of salt like you would any other person.

The reason I like Bill Nye is because he has done a lot to bridge the gap between the poisonous ivory tower that academia has constructed for itself and the rest of the world, and even if you think he cherry-picks his facts and the like, I appreciate that at the very least, he has gotten people to think about science and what it has to say. In that sense, I'd call him one of the most successful science populizers of all time. Is he a scientist? No. A science populizer? Yes.

Anyway, give this a chance for a few minutes (that being said, string theory has... issues): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYAdwS5MFjQ

See? He perfectly demonstrates my twin issues with scientists (NOT science). From my admittedly, incomplete understanding, I don't think String Theory predicts a multiverse but, rather, some scientists extrapolate the basic theory to support such an idea. Again, it's not impossible but also not a given. He then goes on to build on the idea of a multiverse as if it's a given, rather than a theory. In his defense, it would be tedious to constantly make the distinction but given the relative ignorance of the audience he's obviously servicing, it should have been made more clearly. Of course, if our schools focused more on the sciences, this wouldn't be nearly as large a problem but, they don't; they won't; and scientists know that.

I like Feynman as well, which is why I used him in my comparison. As for Bill Nye, I would liken him to a televangelist. They make you think about God but they're full of shit!

Yeah, I know what you mean; that's why I was careful in how I worded I characterized Nye. I appreciate that he gets people talking about science more than what he actually says necessarily (not that it's necessarily invalid; it's the overly authoritative way he asserts himself without the necessary qualifications). And yes, it's very difficult to balance scientific rigor when speaking without also boring your audience to death, a problem for which there may not always be a balance.

I don't want to keep this going ad nauseam, as it will be boring to most others, but I think my original point was forgotten as well as having been stated incompletely.
Without the demonstration and explanation regarding glass solidifying, immediately preceding the earth image, no one would ever make the connection and understand his particular point about the fragility of the earth. Even if you were familiar with the phenomenon, who would make that connection without it being pointed out? Conversely, one needn't be a mathematician, or familiar with the underlying formulae, to fully appreciate J.S. Bach's music. My piano isn't nearly so well tempered. ;-)